


Moonlight Sonata

by Mangaluva



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Gen, Present Tense, inspired by an old fandom meme that I took and made horrible, oldfic, playing fast and loose with Greek mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5131187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangaluva/pseuds/Mangaluva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So this is something I wrote for Hallowe'en in 2010 that I decided to clean up and repost because people liked Miracle a lot and Miracle is basically Moonlight Sonata's reincarnation. I don't think this is still a thing in the DCMK fandom, but at one time there was a big trend of art of "Evil Kid" or some rival for Kid in a colour-reverse version of his outfit, all black with a red shirt and blue tie (this kinda thing might've died out because of Kaito Corbeau, or possibly because it was just incredibly weeb). Much like jokes about Shinichi being a Shinigami in Miracle, I decided to take this concept and make EVERYTHING AWFUL.</p><p>Maybe I should do another one of these kinds of fic for Halloween 2020. Odds are good DC'll still be running, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Adiago Sostenuto

**Author's Note:**

> “...a half moon. She distrusted a moon like that. A full moon could only wane, a new moon could only wax, but a half moon, balancing so precariously between light and dark ... well, it could do anything.”  
>  ~Carpe Jugulum (Terry Pratchett)

It’s a familiar place; another empty rooftop, distant sirens and swearing, a cold night sky full of twinkling stars hidden by light pollution. The only thing that ever changes, it seems to him, is the moon.

Sometimes it’s full, or nearly, silver light washing over him.

Sometimes it’s only a sliver of light, mostly in shadow, drowning him in darkness.

Tonight it’s shadows.

He picks up the jewel. He barely remembers the name, something about flowers, it’s just another glitzy little thing like the rest unless it’s… but he doesn’t get his hopes up. He daren’t hope at all, ever. He knows better than to fly too high. The burns are too severe.

Even before he holds it up to the moonlight, he knows. There will be no red glow. It only sparkles slightly in the slim moonlight, blue and cold. Crystal Bluebell. That’s it.

Just as he knows that, he knows that _he_ will be there. Probably smirking. It’s what he would do, so it’s what _he’ll_ be doing.

“You see?” the voice says to him, the voice of a familiar stranger. He’ll be standing not far away, Kaito knows. He’s never far. “You can’t do it, not this way. But there are other ways.”

“There aren’t,” Kaito says firmly. They both know it is a lie; there are no smoke and mirrors here. It is a lie that Kaito says to himself as much as _him_. He knows that the moment he acknowledges that path, he’ll be tempted to take it.

“You’ll be doing this forever,” he says.

“I have time,” Kaito replies shortly. Then he flies away. He knows that it won’t be enough to get rid of him, but for now, the conversation is over.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Why does the Kaitou Kid always appear with the full moon at his back?

They say it’s for dramatic flair. They say it’s because his white outfit is difficult to see against the glow of the moon. They say it’s because of the shadows the moonlight casts, obscuring his features in brilliant white. None of these are the _real_ reason.

He can’t explain why. Not because he doesn’t know, but because nobody can understand.

But he has no choice once again. Just occasionally, it happens. A prospect that he can’t pass up, one that won’t be around on a full moon.

So he must fly with a shadow on the moon.

He’ll be there again, he knows. He’s always there, but on such nights Kaito can actually _see_ him, like his presence is _physical_. He sees him as a photo negative of Kaito. Black suit, black cape, black hat; maybe a red band and red shirt with a blue tie. Maybe even his eyes will be red, under the monocle over his left eye. A photo negative, a not-funhouse mirror.

The other side of him. The one that flies in shadows. The one that wanted to take the _other_ path.

He simply gasses everyone in sight, this time. He can’t bring himself to trick, to laugh, to dance, not when he bears a shadow which presses him to darker deeds. He can’t take the risk. Nobody gets hurt. But on shadowy nights, somebody just might.

It’s a half-moon, in fact. They’re perfectly matched, equals, facing each other across another empty rooftop. He simply watches, unseen, as Snake appears.

Kaito shoots the killer’s gun away and jumps on him, praying that there are no snipers, or that they will not shoot for fear of hitting their boss. It must be one or the other, for no shots ring out. There’s only fighting, punching, kicking, base and violent. The shadow smiles. It ends with Snake on the ground, Kaito’s gun against his skull.

He breathes heavily, anger and exertion still pumping adrenaline through his veins. The jewel has fallen out of his sleeve. Though it is an emerald, it glows red in the moonlight.

“I win,” the light whispers quietly.

“Finish it,” theshadow prompts silkily. He wants to pull the trigger. So badly, he wants to pull the trigger.

Kaito looks at the prone Snake, looks to the half-moon, looks to himself, looks to the officers trying to creep up to them without being seen.

He smiles as he chooses his path. There is _always_ another path. A magician always has an out.

He steps back, dropping the gun, picking up the glowing jewel. There is a moment of suspension, of shock, of silence.

Then the sniper bullets rip through the air, through the silence, through the flesh, through the bone. Burning him, tearing him, breaking him.

He flies, he falls.

The shadow is gone.

There were police everywhere; neither Snake nor the snipers can escape. Justice will happen.

He stretched out with the jewel, so that it will hit the ground first as they rush towards his shadow.

The jewel shatters first, into a rush of red crystal light. It is the last thing that Kaito sees before he flies.

 _Free_.


	2. Allegretto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prometheus felt sorry for man, languishing in the dark and cold, and so he stole fire from the Gods and gifted it to mortals. Zeus was angered by this, and condemned him to be chained to a boulder until the end of time, his liver torn out by a great eagle each day and regrown each night. On men he visited a different punishment.  
> He ordered Hephaestus to mould her of the earth, and all of the Gods combined to grant her seductive gifts, and they named her Pandora, giving her to men as the first woman. The greatest gifts and curses were her insatiable curiosity and a box, which she was warned never to open. However, open it she did, and when she did all the evils of the world were unleashed. Pandora panicked and attempted to close the box, but all she trapped within was Hope, which to this day remains locked from humanity.

No body was ever found.

That’s what confuses Hakuba Saguru, what keeps him up at nights, thinking about the case. Dozens of cops saw the sniper bullet strike through the Kaitou Kid’s chest, flinging him from the roof. Thousands of people saw him fall. Thousands saw that no hanglider was deployed, even a floor before the ground, when doing so would have been too late.

Thousands saw the flash of red light and then… nothing.

No shards of jewel, no body, no nothing. Nothing has been seen of him since, either. Kuroba Kaito never went home that night and still hasn’t reappeared, to his mother’s grief. The connection was undeniable after that, to the anger and shock of Nakamori-keibu and his daughter.

It’s been six months now and they’re somewhat over the shock, enough that Aoko now just wants him to come back, if only to yell at him. But he hasn’t reappeared. Everything that Saguru knows, everything within logic and reason, tells him that it was impossible for even the Kaitou Kid to vanish so completely.

But he has, jewel and all, because neither logic nor reason have ever held sway over the magician thief. Saguru doesn’t know what that jewel was, what that red flash was, but some instinct tells him that it can be nothing good. He can only hope that wherever Kuroba is now, whatever has become of him, he is alright. But the detective feels in his soul that worse is to come. The men on the rooftop were arrested, but something is not over yet.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

The last thing Kaito remembers is red light. And a voice.

_Free!_

Then darkness. He thought he was going to die. He thinks he must be dead. _Is this what there is after death? Just darkness and nothing?_ He hopes not. _It’s kind of boring._

Still, he gets a sense of something happen. The faintest echoes of light and colour, of sound and sensation begin to penetrate the shadows around him. He follows them, slowly and carefully, not wanting to lose the tentative trail. There’s something there, whether Heaven or Hell he doesn’t care. He figures it could only be Heaven, since the darkness and boredom feels like Hell to him.

But what he finds, after an unknown time of searching, is neither. He has been drifting formlessly, but now he feels a tingling sensation, as if he is holding something in his hands. He can smell something sweet, something vaguely familiar. There’s a sweet taste too, a bit tart. And then, as if through a screen, he can see.

His hands. He can see his hands. One is holding something round and reddish-green. An apple. It brings the apple closer and he gets the sensation of crunching and tarty sweetness. He’s eating an apple? Is he alive? What has he been doing?

The apple comes near again and he tries to still his hand, to pause for a moment to think, but he can’t. He can’t control his own body. He can feel it but he cannot control it, cannot steer or affect it. He can only feel, experience, while something else drives.

_Heh. So you have awakened after all. I thought perhaps your spirit might have passed._

It’s a woman’s voice, and faintly familiar. It takes him a moment to realize that it makes his last memory before the red light. No, just _after_ the red light. Something had come out of the light and into him, something with a woman’s voice…

“Who are you?” he asks. The sound does not leave his body, but surely this hijacker can hear it within. The apple core is dropped and he can feel concrete pounding under his feet. Cloth is moving around his body, changing clothes. It’s very dark, but in flashes of streetlamp-light he can see black clothing. Black trousers and shoes. He can even see himself donning black gloves.

_I am that whom you set free. I used the outpouring of power from the destruction of my crystal prison to teleport and heal your body, to augment it and improve it. Now, in exchange, it is mine. I have a purpose to fulfil with it. Go back to sleep. Soon it shall all be over._

“Soon what shall all be over?” He asks, realizing what he’s wearing. It’s his Kid outfit, but it’s _wrong._ All black and red.

Like _him._

“Soon _what_ shall all be over?” he demands upon receiving no answer. “Who _are_ you? Hey, answer me!”

_Sleep. You shall want no part in this._

“No part in _what_?”

Whoever she is, she does not answer. She just keeps walking, turning off the road and up a driveway. It must be very late, there’s not a single light on in any of the houses. He catches sight of the crescent moon and it is low in the sky, perhaps three or four in the morning.

She disarms the house alarms, sneaking in through a window. She’s using _his_ skills, skills he honed for breaking into heavily-guarded museums and mansions, to get into some small house! What’s in there?

The first thing she does is slip silently into a master bedroom. There’s a couple sleeping on the bed, not noticing their approach.

“What’s going on?” he asks again, some terrible feeling overtaking him as his body approaches the bed. “What are you here for? Hey, hey!”

A hand is reaching out towards the man, towards his throat.

 _I am taking responsibility_.

The black-clad hand wraps around the sleeping man’s throat, the other spritzing some pink gas—sleeping gas—over the two to prevent them waking up. The unknown man’s body begins to thrash and shake as he resists, as his lungs fight for air, but thanks to the gas he does not awake.

“NO!” Kaito yells in horror. “What are you doing?! You’re killing him!”

 _That’s the idea_.

The man’s struggles are going weaker; Kaito fights to regain control of his body but he can’t, he can’t stop it, and soon the man lies still, sleeping forever.

Kaito fights but he can’t do a thing. Whoever— _whatever_ —has his body has complete control; he can only watch as _his_ hands kill this person. Then, when the man is dead, ignoring his wife, the _thing_ moves his body down the hall, into a child’s bedroom.

“NO! _NO!_ ”

But again, he is powerless.

Some time later, the hijacker moves back out into the dark of the night, moving away, leaving only death and darkness in its wake to be discovered by the poor wife come morning. Why she alone has been spared, Kaito does not know. No more does he know why the others have died.

But given that he doesn’t know how long he’s been out, he fears it hasn’t been the first, and won’t be the last.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Curiouser and curiouser.

Saguru might not have noticed it were it not for the fact that he imports English newspapers, but now he’s seen it and the curious case won’t leave his mind. It’s happened in dozens of countries now, the same MO every time and no culprit.

Entire families, from grandparents to babies, wiped out. Suffocated in the night, no sign of struggle or any trace of the murderer. Only handprints around the mouths and necks, matching every time, but the culprit still hasn’t been identified. No motive has been located, no traces or suspects. It hasn’t come to Japan yet but the latest case was in China. It seems to be sweeping the globe.

And it’s been sweeping it for six months now.

He didn’t notice at first. He’s been very wrapped up in the case resulting of the Kid’s final heist, absorbed in the prosecution of the men who were caught, and their capture lead to an even bigger organization, something he found himself working with Kudo Shinichi on. _So this guy does exist_ , was his first thought on the case, and _Kuroba_?! his first thought on meeting the detective himself, but the young man had quickly turned out be to a genius and easy to work with, in contrast to his missing doppelganger. The case went in no time, and when Kudo walked out of his last trial to testify in, when a silver-haired serial killer was sentenced to death for his appalling list of crimes, the other young detective had almost collapsed completely in relief.

But now, with the case over and his mind hungry for more mystery, Saguru has come across this.

It’s more than a bit disturbing. What have any of these people done to warrant cold-blooded murder? Even young children? The case sticks out in his mind all the more because Koizumi commented of it that “something has been unleashed, a guilt from the beginning of humanity”. That the timing coincides with Kuroba’s odd disappearance, with that mysterious red light and the strange jewel…

Something is very, very wrong.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Part of Kaito wants to flee. He thought the darkness was Hell. It’s _nothing_ compared to this.

Sometimes it hasn’t even put them to sleep before it kills them. Some try to run or fight. All of them die.

And Kaito can’t stop it.

Part of him wants to vanish back into the darkness and hide, to let go and pretend that it isn’t happening, but he knows that that’s childish and pointless. He has to find some way to stop this shadow using his body. If only he knew just what it was…

_I am that whom you set free._

_Free!_

Free… from the jewel…?

“Speak to me, damn you!” He calls. “Tell me why! Why are you killing these people? What have they _done_? Speak to me, Pandora!”

An instant later and he is back in the darkness, but he is not alone. A woman is with him, somewhat beautiful but a cold, dead beauty, like a statue or ice. Or crystal.

Her hair is dark black, piled up on her head by golden ribbon but spilling out in places and down her back, haphazardly but elegantly. Her skin is smooth and olive-toned, and perfectly complemented by her white-gold toga. “That is Lady Pandora Anesidora to you, Kaito Kuroba.” She glares at him and he notices something unsettling; her eyes are red, vibrant, burning red. It’s not the colour in and of itself that worries him—he’s used to Koizumi’s eyes, and when last he was in school the witch had been defrosting, her eyes sometimes warmed with genuine affection towards himself or Aoko or Hakuba—no, there’s something _in_ those eyes, something cold and angry and resentful. “You demand answers.”

“Damn straight I do,” Kaito replies angrily. Poker Face is no good here, they’re within his own mind. “ _Why_? Why do you want all of these people dead?!”

“I am merely taking responsibility,” she says, regarding him coldly. “Responsibility for my mistake, my sin.”

“You said that before,” Kaito says. “Responsibility? What, did they come out of the box or something?”

“Pretty much.” At his confusion, she smiles thinly. “Silly child. Did you take the legend literally? Did you really think that I was given some jewelled casket by the Gods from which dark shadows flew? I know what you thought, boy. I have been living in your mind for six months.”

“Wait, what?” Kaito says, confused by her digression on languages. “So… what, the tale is a metaphor?”

“Precisely,” Pandora says softly. “It is a euphemism for what really transpired. You know how I came to be, I assume. Man was once immortal and without weakness, but they dared defy the gods and for that woman was created—me. I was created to tempt men to ruin, not with a box, but with a secret that only I knew and was instructed not to get curious about, not to investigate. Before women, there had been no procreation, and no knowledge of sexual pleasure. Only I was given to know its existence… but I grew curious, as you know, and my curiosity got the better of me. I chose a man and we… opened the box.”

Kaito gapes as the implications of this spread across his mind. “And _that_ … unleashed evil and stole life from mankind?!”

“Just look at the evil crimes committed for it,” Pandora says, twirling one finger seductively in her dark locks. “And it creates sources of evil… people. To create life we must share it, and in doing so we lost immortality… and made humanity self-propagating. Without this ability, the single most evil species on earth, immortal or no, would have eventually died out through accidents or what have you. I have seen your knowledge of this time, what you have done to the world! You have poisoned the earth and the waters and the air! You have wiped out whole species! I would that you’d wipe out each other, though it’s clearly not for lack of trying. Humans _are_ the evils of the world—you will consume and destroy the earth. I was born of the earth, child, I feel its pain and suffering, and it is _all my fault_!”

“So… for your guilt, to ‘take responsibility’… you want to wipe out mankind, one family at a time?!” Kaito says angrily. “You perceive us all as evil and so you want to kill us all?! That’s—!”

“Oh, not _all_ of humanity,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. Rather than calming Kaito, it makes his blood boil. “Just my descendants. I was the _first_ woman, but not the _only_. I simply wish to rectify my own mistakes, my own failure. Then I can go. My resentment and guilt sealed me into that jewel, and the Gods, fearing I would become a vengeful spirit, created that crystal prison around me. But those Gods are dead! They have become fairy tales and myth and so they are _dead_! That allowed my prison to be broken and for me to be _freed_ from my blood cell! Thank you for that,” she adds sweetly.

“B… blood cell?” Kaito asks in shock, his brain attempting to marshal some argument, some _sense_ for this insane woman.

“That jewel was my virginal blood crystallized,” Pandora says distantly. “There was more magic around back then, and that kind of thing happened a lot.”

“Never mind,” Kaito says, shaking himself. “Look, I know there are bastards in the world, all right? I know that better than anybody! But I also know better than anyone that there are good people out there. There’s hate and death, yeah, but there’s also kindness and love. You can’t make the many pay for the transgressions of the few, and there are _much_ better ways to do it than by killing everybody! Stop, dammit! Let it go, go away, _let me go_! Stop using _me_ to kill! Why me? If you were so powerful, why not just make your own body?!”

“Because I _like_ using you to kill,” she says maliciously, stopping Kaito dead in his tracks in shock. “It’s easy to bend this body to my will. There’s so much hate and anger that you bottled up and never used. You hate it so. Don’t you realize, boy? I _despise_ thieves like you. It was a sneaky thief that caused my existence, caused the Gods to give me knowledge and make me curious, caused me to make my mistakes! I would that I had never existed, but thanks to a filthy sneak-thief I _do_! Given the chance, would you deny yourself the opportunity to steal fire from the Gods?”

“Sure, but then I’d give it back!” Kaito snaps, and then curses himself for saying it. Within his own mind, though, he can’t lie, and unfortunately his joking nature has chosen this moment to make a comeback.

“You are no different to that fool,” Pandora spits acidly. “Well, if you refuse to vanish, then you can watch and enjoy, Prometheus.” With that, she vanishes, and Kaito feels a cold fear. What does she mean by that?

“Hey!” he yells angrily into the nothingness. “Come back, dammit! I’m not done and you’re still in my body! Hey! _Hey_!!”

But there is no more response. Kaito peeks out through his eyes, and sees himself getting off of a plane. He can hear announcement and see signs.

He’s in Japan. Tokyo. _Home_.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

It can’t be.

He got decommissioned from the Kid case four months ago, when it was closed again. And the stupid boy that is the undeniable suspect vanished six months ago. The Kid is _gone._

But here he is, right in front of him, alone with him in the cold night. Nakamori Ginzo feels his jaw drop.

Only… _is_ it the Kid? There’s something wrong about him. The outfit is right, but the _colours_ are all wrong. Normally the white suit and hat glow in the night. Now they’re black, almost indiscernible from the shadows, and the only dash of colour is not elegant blue but harsh, blood red. What’s going on? Why is he dressed so strange, so dark, so…

… _evil…_

“Kid?” he asks gruffly. “Hell, Kuroba. Is that you, boy?”

Kid just walks slowly towards him. There’s something odd about it, some air of a predator stalking the prey.

“Oi, Kuroba,” he demands, unsettled. “Talk to me, boy!”

“Kuroba is not here,” Kid says softly, and a chill runs down Ginzo’s spine. “But he’s watching. Are you watching this, Prometheus?”

“Wh—?” Ginzo asks, before a black-gloved hand whips out at snakespeed, wrapping around his throat. Gasping in shock as his lungs are blocked, Ginzo reaches for his gun, but the other gloved hand smacks it away from him. It feels like an iron bar. What _is_ this thing?!

“K…” he gasps as the other hand wraps around his throat, pressing down on his windpipe. They’re close now, so close that Ginzo can see under the hat brim and right into the Kid’s face. It _is_ Kuroba, but there’s something off about the boy’s face, something malicious and twisted and… _wrong_ …

The eyes are red. Glowing, burning red. But in the very depths of him, even as his vision fades and his limbs grow weak, Ginzo can see two tiny, tiny points of blue.

_Nakamori-keibu! NO!_

_Kaito-kun…_ he thinks, dizzily recognizing that voice. _What… has happened to you…?_

Then thought fades, and there is nothing.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Kaito is screaming in horror and anger, but nothing he can do can reach. He’s watching a man as dear to him as his own father die and he can do nothing, not as he watches colour drain from his face and his eyes close and his struggles stop…

Pandora drops him. There’s no longer anything to be done.

“Kami, no,” Kaito sobs. “Why? He was a good man!”

_He was human._

“N-Nakamori-keibu!”

Pandora turns and Kaito can see a couple of cops. “Good!” he yells. “They’ve seen you! I hope they shoot you, dammit! I hope they _kill_ you!”

_Not today._

One of the horrified-looking cops has raised a gun, aiming it at him, but Pandora dodges the bullet easily and runs. Within seconds, she is far from the scene of her crime.

“Damn you,” Kaito growls in grief and anger. “Damn you to Hell!”

_We shall see. Perhaps Hades is waiting for me. But for now, I have work to complete. There is much more to do this night._

“Who else?” Kaito asks, suddenly afraid. “Who else are you going to _murder—_ ” then he gasps sharply as he realizes.

If Nakamori-keibu wasn’t just a choice of target to punish Kaito—Kami knew killing _anybody_ was torture to him—if he was on her list of descendants…

Then there was one more. One person who would also be grief-stricken by his death, one person descended from _him_ …

His daughter. Aoko.

_NO!_

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Aoko’s head is spinning from hours of crying. She’s sitting on her bedroom floor now, right where she’s been since receiving that terrible phone call. Her arms are crossed on her bed, her head resting on them, staring without seeing at the pattern of moonlight on her bed. She can barely process what she heard. They said that her father was dead—not only that, but _Kid_ had killed him.

She has only just come to terms with Kaito being Kid. She can’t believe that he’s murdered her father. He _couldn’t_ have…

It takes her, in her grief-muddled state, a long time to realize that the moonlight falling onto her bed has been blocked. Through sore and red-rimmed eyes, she looks up to her window.

He’s standing there on the windowsill, black cape floating softly in a slight breeze. The description was true. It’s Kid in colour-negative, all shadow-black and blood-red. Colours of death and darkness, colours Kid should never wear. It’s not who he is—who he _was_. She doesn’t know who or what he is now, but he’s moved beyond all redemption. He crossed the line and didn’t stop.

 He’s watching her silently. She holds his gaze, but soon she can feel fresh tears welling up.

“So?” she says bitterly, injecting as much anger and hate as possible into her voice. “Are you here to take me too?”

In an instant he’s kneeling next to her, one black-gloved hand softly caressing her cheek. “Oh, yes,” he says quietly. So close, she can see Kaito’s face under the hat, the red eyes glowing out from the shadows. Red? “Relax, sweet lady. It will all be over soon.”

“Wait—” Aoko begins to say. Something’s wrong. The face and voice are both Kaito, but the eyes… they’re… _wrong_. He’s not Kaito. She can’t ask, though, because silken gloves have closed around her throat, smooth but firm pressure blocking her windpipe. Involuntarily, she gasps, fighting for air, but she no longer really wants to. Her father is gone, and whatever is before her is no longer Kaito. It’s all over…

_No! NO!_

Her eyes snap open at that voice, the sound echoing at the edge of her hearing. In the very depths of the red eyes, now she can see two points of tortured-looking blue. A familiar blue.

“Ka…” she gasps, but she no longer has the air to speak. She tries to raise her arms to fight back but she doesn’t have the strength, the pressure on her neck is painful, she can’t breathe, she just can’t…

 _Aoko! No!_ No!

 _Kaito_ , she thinks faintly. _Where I’m going… can I… see you again…?_

NO!!

The hands tighten sharply around her neck before suddenly releasing. No longer being held up, she collapses to the floor, gasping for air. After a few moments, as strength returns to her, she forces herself to look up.

The black Kid is clutching his head in his hands, flinging himself from side to side, into her walls, her desk, his hat knocked off, all the time howling and arguing with himself.

“Get back, boy! No! You can’t have her! I gave you life, child, how dare you defy me! I don’t care! You’re not killing anyone else, and you’re _not using me_!”

With that, he bangs his head repeatedly into the wall, almost _snarling._

“Kaito!” Aoko shrieks, fearing he’ll kill himself. Suddenly he stills, shaking violently, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Damn you, boy!” he snarls for a moment in a woman’s voice, before reverting. “No, you bitch! It’s over! _Let me go_!!”

He screams again, a bizarre scream seemingly made up of two voices, a scream of terrible agony as he _rips_ ; one second, he’s screaming, and the next two of him are flung apart in a flash of red light, hitting opposite walls. Aoko crawls backwards in fear, feeling that whatever had been in Kaito has been unleashed, and she doesn’t know which…

They both rise to their feet at almost exactly the same moment, facing off against each other across her room. One glares with vibrant red eyes, the other with angry blue.

“Kaito—” she cries, making towards the blue one, but the red one shoots towards her, grabbing her in the neck and slamming her into the wall. Her head smacks hard against the wall and she is enveloped in black again…

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

It takes Kaito a moment to realize that he’s back in control of his own body. He slowly pushes himself to his feet, and looks into Pandora’s red eyes.

She’s still wearing the form of the shadow, of _him_ , but the eyes are unmistakeable. They glare at each other for a long moment, gazes locked, before someone calls his name.

“Kaito—”

“Aoko!” Kaito screams, trying to tell her to get back, but at the sound Pandora has cleared the room and planted her hands back around Aoko’s throat, slamming her to the wall and pinning her there as the murderess begin to strangle her victim again. Kaito cries out in anger and launches himself over, swinging Aoko’s desk chair at Pandora’s head. It makes contact with a resounding _crack_ , causing Pandora’s head to whip to the side as she drops Aoko, who slumps limply to the floor. Kaito launches himself at Pandora, determined not to let her touch Aoko again. Pandora punches him hard in the gut, causing him to double over, but he recovers quickly and uses the movement to throw Pandora over his shoulder and out of Aoko’s window.

He spins around and leans out of the window to look out, but Pandora is gone, vanished into the darkness.

But she’ll be back. She’s held onto a grudge for millennia. It’s not over.

She’ll be back.


	3. Presto Agitato

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “This will only end with your destruction or mine. However, if I could be assured of the former, then I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.”  
>  ~Sherlock Holmes

When Aoko finally awakes, at first she is surprised to even _be_ awake. She survived? Yes, she must have, she’s lying on her bed staring at her ceiling. She wonders if it might not have been a nightmare, but no, she can feel the bruises around her neck, see a small dark spot on the wall where perhaps someone had smacked their head repeatedly until they bled.

And she can hear water. Running water, somewhere in her house.

Gingerly, she gets to her feet. She’s awfully sore from being slammed into the wall and has a terrible headache, but when she reaches back she can feel no blood or clotted blood in her hair, so thankfully it’s probably not bad. She wanders out of her room and into the hall.

There’s a light on in the bathroom. She can see it shining out from under the door. She gravitates towards it, scared to be alone, even though her window has been closed and somebody has moved her dresser in front of it. In fact, furniture appears to have been moved in front of every window in the house. Somebody has fortified the house…

Kaito. Is he safe? Is he… okay? What _was_ that thing?

The bathroom door isn’t locked. She peeks in.

She flushes violently for a moment to see the black clothes all dumped in a pile next to the toilet and Kaito sitting naked on the shower floor, curled up with his head pressed into his knees. The water pounding into his head has flattened his hair out, making him look bedraggled and forlorn, and he keeps rubbing his hands together. Even with the water lubricating this movement, they’re turning red.

“Kaito…” she says softly, swallowing hard but grabbing a towel and walking towards him. He jumps and looks up at her in surprise when she turns the shower off and drops the towel around his shoulders. She’s flaming red but she can’t leave him now, not when he looks so broken. What _was_ that thing? What happened to him the past six months?

“I’m… sorry, Aoko,” he croaks, looking down. “Pandora… she used me to kill him… your father… I’m so sorry…”

“Pandora?” she asks, kneeling on the wet floor next to him. “Is that what that red-eyed… _thing_ was?”

“Not just him,” Kaito continues, sounding horrified, half-mad. “So many people. She killed them all. And she used _me!_ She used me…” He trails off hoarsely, staring in horror at his shaking hands, water dripping from them, though maybe he thinks it’s blood. He sounds unstable, terrified.

“Kaito…” she says, placing a hand over his. “Tell me. Tell me what happened. Please.” She forces up a weak smile, trying to reassure him. She feels so weak, so scared, but he needs strength. She has to be strong for him, so that he can recover enough to be strong for her. “If I can forgive you for being Kid, I’m sure I can forgive you for being possessed by whatever that thing was.”

“Pandora,” Kaito says quietly. Then he sighs heavily. “Aoko… do you know the Greek myth of Prometheus?”

He talks quietly, in a soft monotone, for a long time. When he’s done, tears are flowing down Aoko’s cheeks, but she puts her arms around his shoulders and doesn’t let go.

They stay there for a long time, summoning courage. They have to do something.

They can’t let Pandora go.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Next morning they’re ready to go. Aoko is carrying her father’s pistol, no arguments. Pandora will be back for her anyway, so she might as well go with Kaito. Perhaps her presence will even draw Pandora to them.

Pandora only kills at night, in shadow, Kaito knows that much. And there was another death last night, after Pandora fled into the darkness. She must have abandoned them for now, but she killed again to tell them that she’s out there, waiting for another opportunity. Some lawyer named Kisaki.  Her secretary, having been trying to phone and page her all morning, had turned up at her apartment around lunchtime and found her corpse.

“I think my dad had a second cousin or something named Kisaki,” Aoko theorizes. “She’s going after her descendants, after all, so all of the victims will be distantly related…”

“Then we need to find out if Kisaki Eri has any immediate relatives,” Kaito says hoarsely. “They may be next.” To that end, they visit Saguru, who is beyond shocked to see them.

“Kuroba, what… how…?” the normally composed Brit gabbles in surprise at the sight of them on his doorstep. A white-gloved hand quickly slaps over the blonde’s mouth to shut him up, though lightly.

“Hakuba-kun, there’s no time,” Aoko begs him as he falls silent and she and Kaito step into the mansion. “We have to know. The Kisaki murder case last night. Did she have any immediate relatives?”

“The… let me think… yes, actually, now that I think of it she does,” Hakuba says, a little confused. “I was looking into that case but I didn’t want to get too involved. Kudo-kun was there, and investigating with a passion. Seems that the victim is the mother of his girlfriend, Mouri Ran.”

“Her daughter?” Aoko gasps in horror. “Oh, no… she’ll be next!”

“Mouri… also the daughter of Mouri Kogoro?” Kaito says softly, remembering the girl that he’s seen on a few heists. A karate champ, as he recalls, but Pandora mentioned “augmenting” his body. She’ll be stronger and faster than any human, he’s sure. They won’t beat her in hand-to-hand. That pistol is necessary.

“Yes,” Hakuba says quietly. “He’s investigating too, and is even angrier than Kudo-kun. I didn’t feel I had any right to be there. They might be at Mouri-san’s agency in Beika, but if they’re not I’m sure you’ll find them at her condo in Beika…” He gives them the address. Kaito nods, committing it to memory.

“Thank you, Hakuba-kun,” Aoko says as Kaito turns to leave.

“Wait!” Hakuba calls quickly, grabbing Kaito on the white-clad shoulder. White now. The frightened cops had described a Kid in black. Is it an imposter? “What are you two trying to do? What’s going on?”

“It’s all my fault that that thing’s out there,” Kaito says quietly, enigmatically. “I’m going to make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone else. And it’s not touching Aoko again.” He gently intertwines his hand with hers. “You have my word. I will _destroy_ it.”

With that, they’re gone, leaving Hakuba with more questions than answers, lost in the dark.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Shinichi can’t bear to see Ran in this much pain.

She’s never cried so much, not even over him, not even when hr mother left. He’s looked everywhere, all over the apartment complex, but there’s no trace of the burglar in the window which has been opened, only an indication that whoever broke in was _very_ good.

Given that the handprints on Kisaki Eri’s neck match the ones on Nakamori Ginzo’s maybe that’s not surprising. After all, the witness report there was that it was the Kid who killed him, dressed in black.

At first Shinichi completely disbelieved it, that it was somebody else hijacking and altering Kid’s outfit. Kid did not kill. Not ever. But something has been odd ever since that heist six months ago where Kid and the jewel had disappeared in a flash of red light. At first Shinichi had thought that maybe Kid had used the light as a distraction to sneak away, but he couldn’t have used it as a distraction to just roll over and sneak off, not after falling thirty stories. And he couldn’t have flown away, either. The flash had appeared when he was approximately six feet from the ground, too low for the hanglider. Somehow he vanished, and then not long after that the mysterious deaths had begun, deaths matching the style in which Nakamori Ginzo and Kisaki Eri died. Perhaps the light was used to hide Kid’s body being spirited away and an imposter has taken his place. Or maybe Kid was somehow rescued behind the light and his MO has drastically changed. Shinichi doesn’t know.

“Come on,” he says softly, putting his arm around his red-eyed girlfriend’s shoulders and steering her away from the apartment, the crime scene. She doesn’t need to see her mother’s body, the traces of her life and the facts of her death, any more. He still wants to poke around, but he also doesn’t want Ran around here anymore and rationally he knows that there’s nothing to be found. Kid or imitator, nothing has been found before. In any case, if there’s anything that can be found, Occhan will find it. Shinichi’s never seen the PI this driven in his life. It’s not really surprising. He’s grieving as much as Ran is, but more than that there was so much unsaid between the older detective and his estranged wife, so much that can never be said. Unsaid words are eating at his soul, and always will, now.

As he takes Ran into the lift, chatting lightly to her the whole time, filling the air with comforting chatter, part of him is still thinking. Kid doesn’t kill, not ever, but the slick and phantomlike style are very much Kid. But why the sudden switch to death colours? And the subtlety? Kid has always prided himself on being the antithesis of conventional criminals. So why the switch? And if it’s an imposter trying to pin the blame on Kid, why would he work so hard to avoid being seen before now? And what is the _motive_? Almost nothing links the families. Some have criminal records among them, some don’t. Some are single people, some are whole families from grandparents to babies. In many cases one or two people have been left alive in a household, one of a couple or a pair of grandparents. Why? And Nakamori-keibu and Kisaki-bengoshi…

So many questions, no answers. That, at least, fits the Kid’s MO, if in a far more morbid fashion.

All the time, he is chatting to Ran, squeezing her shoulders. _You need someone, and I’m here. I’m not leaving you. Never again._

“Shinichi…” she finally says quietly as the lift _dings_ , the doors opening to the ground floor. Her hand rises to her shoulder, squeezing his, and he drops his hand down to twine his fingers in hers, squeezing back, before tugging her towards the doors.

“Let’s grab something to eat,” he says. “It’s late, you must be hungry.” She probably hasn’t eaten since breakfast. She got pulled out of school not long before lunch to be told the terrible news. And despite the death not being a member of his family, Shinichi left with Ran anyway. His teacher knew he’d just stare out of the window or sleep on his desk if she didn’t let him go. It took him very little time to catch up to his curriculum after returning to himself. Ironically, that was a result of that last bizarre Kid heist. The men who had attempted to kill Kid had had contacts in the Black Organization, and with a little assistance from Hakuba Saguru and Hattori Heiji, they had busted that case wide open. The shadows had been brought to light.

Only one shadow is left from that case. One big, black question mark.

It’s while they’re waiting to cross the street when it happens. Cars are racing past, as they do, and they’ve fallen into their own introspective silences as they stand by the roadside. The street is fairly empty, just a few cop cars parked by the roadside, their drivers swarming the apartment. Then Shinichi senses someone behind him, his detective instincts kicking in a moment too late. Before he can turn, what feels like a steel bar cracks into his left arm. He screams in agony and automatically takes his hand from Ran’s to grasp the broken appendage, now full of the chill, fiery pain of shattered bones. The moment he lets Ran go, a shadow moves between them. Ran begins to kick but the shadow is faster, parrying her with one arm while thrusting Shinichi away with the other, so hard that he is flung off of his feet and crashes back into the ground twenty feet away, wrenching another agonized scream from him as he lands on his damaged arm, shattering more bones and what feels like a couple of ribs. The shadow turns back to Ran, kicking out and knocking her backwards, not onto the pavement but into the street, straight into the path of an oncoming car.

It all takes perhaps three seconds at most.

Shinichi immediately forgets the pain in his mutilated arm as everything, moving so fast a moment ago, suddenly seems to slow down. Ignoring the burn of his lungs—he’s endured fire in his very bones, it’s nothing—he screams again, a scream of even deeper pain than the destruction of his arm, a scream that makes a sick harmony with the squeals of the car’s breaks and Ran’s scream of pain, abruptly cut off a moment after she vanishes under the car.

He doesn’t know how he crossed that distance, doesn’t care, but a moment later he’s passed the car which has skidded to a stop at an awkward angle, following the tracks of blood towards the limp, ragged form it has left behind. The driver stumbles out of his car, gaping in horror at what he has done, perhaps pulling out his mobile to call an ambulance. Shinichi feels tears rising as he drops to his knees, nothing to do with the pain the jolting movement has caused in his fractured (broken? Crushed? He doesn’t care to really check or think about it now) ribs. He reaches out the shaking hand on the end of his good arm to touch her, bile rising with the tears at the slick, warm feel of blood. But the blood is still flowing, he can feel a fluttering pulse pumping the precious fluid towards dozens of exit wounds. She is alive. For now.

Crouched over the near-corpse of the girl he loves, Shinichi looks up to finally see the shadow that has done this. He vaguely takes in the tear-blurred, black-and-red form of the Kid. A distorted image, especially when he smiles coldly. It’s nothing like the playful grin of the Kid in mid-heist. Somehow, Shinichi can’t believe that this is the same jester that has eluded him so often.

A black fist is raised into the air, the cold smile never wavering. Shinichi knows he’s in no shape to fight him. All he can do is curl protectively over Ran, desperate to preserve whatever life is left in her.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

They’re still at the crime scene, Kaito hears from police officers speaking outside of the Mouri Detective Agency. He should have known. He turns and runs towards the second address, the home of Kisaki Eri. Aoko is hot on his heels. He no longer cares about subtlety in his urgency. Night is falling. Perhaps people notice the Kaitou Kid streaking through the streets in a blaze of white, but he has vanished into the thick Tokyo foot-traffic too fast to be sure.

“Can you do this?” Aoko calls to him as they run, clutching her father’s gun. She doesn’t have spare bullets and there are only a couple of shots in it. She has to make them count. “Can you really kill it?” That’s the question, isn’t it? He’s never willingly hurt a living creature, not even the men who killed his father, not until that last terrible night. Even knowing what this thing has done, how many people it has killed… can he do it? Can the Kid kill?

“I have to, Aoko,” he replies wearily. A shadow of his silly grin cracks his face for the briefest moment. “There’s already so much innocent blood on my hands… some guilty blood won’t make a difference. Anyway, she stole that form from me, so it’s more like self-mutilation, right? Or suicide…” He falls silent after that, all breath reserved for running. She wants to comfort him, to drive him from his depression and tell him that it’s not his fault, but she knows that such deep-set guilt cannot be shifted easily, and anyway there’s no time.

She clutches the gun again. Two shots. She doesn’t know how good of a shot she is, she’s never held a gun before, but she’ll do anything to keep another drop of blood from staining Kaito’s soul.

They’re close to the condo, but the traffic’s stopped, something’s wrong up ahead. Aoko feels her heart freeze, sees Kaito’s face shut down. Are they too late?

Then they see it, in a bloody tableau ringed by horrified yet grotesquely fascinated rubberneckers. In the epicentre are two prone forms in a sea of blood, and a menacing black form standing over them, one fist raised. Aoko remembers its freakish strength and knows that if that blow lands, it will kill. Barely knowing what she’s doing, she raises the gun and fires.

 _It_ howls as the bullet cracks into its hand, but either the shot wasn’t very precise or whatever the hell that body’s made out of that makes it so freakishly strong has also made it very resistant, because there isn’t much blood or the breaking of bones. The voice is no longer Kaito’s—the scream is distinctly female, and more angry than pained. Still, it steps back from the bodies on the ground, turning to face its attackers.

“Pandora!” Kaito yells furiously, tackling his dark twin, who either wasn’t expecting this or had been expecting to parry it. They both go flying, tumbling into the road past the bodies, whom Aoko crouches protectively next to. One is indiscernible due to the massive injuries and blood, but the other is male, and when he raises his head Aoko is startled to notice how much he resembles Kaito. He too is injured, and has a look of abject horror on his face as he clutches the other body with one arm, whether dead or not Aoko can’t tell.

“So it is an imposter,” he murmurs, staring at the fight going on between the Kids. It’s dirty ground-fighting, but maybe it’s better that way since it makes it more difficult for the imposter to take advantage of its freakish strength. A man standing by a car is yelling that he’s called an ambulance, and there are police cars nearby so surely there are police not far away, but there are none in sight as Kaito and his imposter finally break apart and scurry to their feet, facing off across a blood-streaked stretch of road. Kaito stands between Aoko and the imposter, laser-blue eyes not breaking from the blazing red. White and black, light and dark, shine and shadow.

“Prometheus,” it says softly. “Don’t you dare try and stop me. I don’t have to kill you, but I have much still to do.”

“You lived in my head for six months,” Kaito responds airily. “You must realize what my response is to being told I can’t do something.” He strikes out, kicking at Pandora’s head, but it parries, lightning fast, and his leg makes a horrible snapping side that causes Aoko to cry out in fear. Kaito merely grunts in pain, Poker Face solidly in place, but it is Pandora who screams in pain. Aoko doesn’t realize why; red is spreading down Kaito’s white leg, but he doesn’t appear to have landed a blow on Pandora. Yet its right leg too is buckling at a bizarre angle, as if it received precisely the same injury as Kaito.

Then Aoko realizes. It has. She saw it herself; Pandora split from Kaito’s body. She remembers his story—Pandora’s power filled Kaito’s body, protecting and repairing it, and when Kaito cast Pandora out, she took the power with her, forming a new body… one based on Kaito’s. Somehow, there’s still a link.

“What the…” The guy behind Aoko is muttering in shock. Perhaps he’s Kudo. Pandora’s target was Kudo’s girlfriend, after all.

“It’s still linked to him,” Aoko whispers with glee. “It can’t hurt him!”

“You can’t hurt me,” Kaito crows, echoing her.  “You stole that form from me! That body still contains some essence of mine, so if you want to kill me you’ll destroy it!”

Pandora looks frightened for a moment. Clearly it didn’t anticipate this. And perhaps it’s remembered, as Aoko has, that Kaito cracked it across the head with a chair in Aoko’s room, and Kaito received no damage. The connection is one-way, and now puts Kaito at a distinct advantage.

Then a horrible, frightening smile spreads across Pandora’s sick copy of Kaito’s face.

“Oh, I can still hurt you, Prometheus,” it says softly. “I can hurt you very much. I lived in your head, like you said. I know how.” Then, instead of striking at Kaito, it whips around, arms moving at snakespeed as it makes a huge hop.

The last exchange moved their positions so that Pandora is closer to Aoko than Kaito is. For the second time, Aoko feels Pandora’s iron grip lock around her throat.

But this time she has a gun…

“ _AOKO!!_ ”

“This time for sure.”

_CRACK_

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

 “Traffic’s backed up, Bocchama,” Baaya says in concern. “Oh dear, I do hope something hasn’t happened…”

That alone sends chills down Saguru’s spine. Aoko and Kuroba’s abrupt appearance and disappearance threw him, but it took all of ten seconds after they’d left for him to realize that he shouldn’t have let them go. Something is going on, something bad, and they are running into it _alone_. It had taken him a while to locate Baaya and cajole her into giving him a lift to the Mori Detective Agency, on the other side of town, only to be told by a waitress at the café below that a girl matching Aoko’s description had been and gone to the Kisaki murder scene, on the _other_ other side of town.

Now he feels he’ll be too late.

He gets out, ignoring Baaya’s protests and questions, and starts running, soon abandoning the crowded sidewalk in favour of simply running down the middle of the road, through the standstill cars. He ignores yells and complaints, praying that he’ll be in time, that he’ll be able to do— _something_ , he doesn’t know what.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

 “ _AOKO!!_ ” Kaito screams as Pandora, balancing on one leg, wraps her hands around Aoko’s throat and lifts her right off her feet. The guy, probably Kudo, is trying to get to his feet, but he’s battered and mutilated and Aoko is _choking_ …

“This time for sure,” Pandora says dangerously as Aoko raises the gun and Kaito lunges. He can’t make the whole distance in one hop like Pandora, but if he ignores the pain in his leg…

_CRACK_

Kaito slams into Pandora, causing her to drop Aoko. Both black and white figures yelp in pain as they slam into the ground, jolting their broken legs, monocles following the hats lost in the first tackle to the ground with a _crack_ ; now both bright blue eyes are free to clash with both of the red. Then the blue shift, locking onto Aoko’s curiously still form, which Kudo is examining closely, though the only hand which seems to be working is still resting on the mangled body next to him, most likely Mori Ran. His look changes from distant and calculating (Kaito gets the distinct impression that parts of the guy’s brain are shutting down entirely by this point) to simple, glazed horror.

Kaito does not like that look.

He shifts himself to Aoko’s side, croaking her name. Kudo looks up at him, something terrible written across his face.

“She’s—” he begins, but Kaito doesn’t want to hear what he can see in the other teen’s eyes. Ignoring his leg, burning even more in pain now, he kneels next to Aoko, trying to lift and cradle her.

“Aoko,” he calls croakily. “Ao—” he cuts off sharply as he lifts her, suddenly realizing that she cannot hear him.

Her neck flops backwards at an absurd angle, too loose, too limp. That’s what Pandora meant when she said “For sure”. That’s what the crack was. It wasn’t a gunshot.

The gun falls from her limp hand.

He can’t feel the pain in his leg anymore. He can’t feel _anything_ anymore. Everything stopped when Aoko did.

“Now go, Prometheus,” Pandora says coldly. “Curl up and die again, for all I care. Just get out of my way. Let me finish my work.”

Kaito carefully lies Aoko down, closing her black, glassy eyes. As he does so, he picks up the gun.

Kudo’s talking. There are sirens in the distance. These noises are unimportant. All that Kaito hears is the _click_ as he opens the revolver to check the shots.

There’s only one left. Aoko must have been saving it until she could be certain of hitting Pandora. After all, a karate champ like Mouri Ran can dodge a bullet; Pandora, with her insanely ramped-up reflexes, definitely can. So really, there’s only one way to be sure.

Only one.

He stands up, proud and tall, only a touch wobbly on the leg that he can no longer feel. He raises the gun. Pandora spots it and smirks, and an instant later is holding a shrieking hostage, one of the horrorstruck gawkers who have been unable to bring themselves nearer. Kaito realizes that this protection is less against himself than the cops who have moved to the front of the hubbub; with a hostage at stake, they can do nothing.

“Will you shoot me now?” Pandora snarks. She probably feels that Kaito will not risk another life. Kaito gives her a glassy smile.

“It is a shame that your movements follow mine rather than anticipating them,” he murmurs, remembering defeating a similar foe in a similar fashion.

He wonders if Pandora has ever seen those memories. Perhaps she will realize. It will still be too late to stop him.

Kudo has realized. He’s trying to get to his feet, yelling “Kid, wait!” but Kaito ignores him, moving the gun.

Under his chin.

“Kuroba, _NO_!” Hakuba howls, the blond barrelling down the pavement towards them at high speed. Pandora’s expression changes to one of horror as she realizes, tossing the hostage aside as she begins to move.

Too late.

Kaito closes his eyes and, thinking of Aoko, jerks his finger, fire wiping the world away.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

The response is slightly delayed. As the white thief hits the ground, a moment after his brains, the black fake howls in agony, stumbling to a halt in mid-leap and falling to the ground as his leg gives way.

Then the back of his head explodes.

Saguru has been running so fast that when he tries to stop he almost facevaults into the blood now liberally sprayed across the ground in a wide radius, the focus of the evening’s brutalities. Stopped cars are moving onto the pavement to let the ambulances through, police trying to control the screaming and horrified crowd. Saguru drops to his knees beside Kudo, ignoring the dark liquid soaking into his pristine trousers.

He can barely take in what he’s seeing. He doesn’t want to look at the wrecked body in Kudo’s shaking grasp, who he doesn’t know, or the red-soaked form of the former white thief, or what is spilling out of his mop of once messy and now soaked hair. He focuses his gaze on Aoko, who alone seems undamaged, aside from the vivid black bruises around a neck which is at entirely the wrong angle. God, no. He should’ve stopped them…

“I should have stopped them,” he gasps aloud. Breath has frozen in his throat, just another pair of lungs which have stopped working. Ambulance medics are around him now, some lifting Kudo onto a stretcher next to the torn body that he seems incapable of letting go of, one asking Saguru if he has any injuries as others check Aoko’s corpse. Kaito’s needs no checking.

“What… the hell?”

At Kudo’s pained and confused query, Saguru glances over the scene again. And notices something odd.

The black Kid is gone. In his place lies a woman, a beautiful woman with long brown-black hair and olive skin and toga-robes of white and gold…

And then she dissolves into red light, and there is nothing. Only the thief shattered by fire and the broken form of his one hope, both washed away by a sea of blood and evil.


End file.
